Bread and Tulips (2000)A feel good movie that is also a good movie. It's beyond just warm and colorful, with scenes of Venice night and day, and beyond just triumphant, with true love winning in more ways than one. It is most of all populated with great characters. Italian leading lady Licia Maglietta is a wonder of naturalistic acting. She is sympathetic of course, but not a cliché. She plays a housewife on a diversion away from her family, and she looks and acts like a housewife. As strong as she is, and as independent, she is also devoted to her family. The fact she left them at all is perfectly unfolded as an accident that she turns into an opportunity, all by intuition. The man she meets is no paradigm of handsome or charming, in fact he's just the opposite. But he is so inherently good, a really decent human being, she comes to like him, and look out for him. Played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, he matches Maglietta's believable ease and imperfect, quiet intensity. The rest of the cast is truly supportive, and tips just slightly (or more than slightly in one case) into caricature, to reminds us, I suppose, that this is a movie, a fantasy, a comedy in many ways.But it's also a deeply serious and moving love story between two middle-aged people who are ready for renewal.I have a feeling many people, especially people with families or those conservative at heart, will find the basic premise of a woman leaving her family in a glib and almost carefree way and not going back for a long time to be shameful or even sinful. Her kids are normal distracted teenagers who like her when they notice her, her husband is a hardworking and loud businessman who doesn't beat her, her home is her own and comfortable. In other words, she has a really normal life, a good one by most measures. Does everyone have the right to up and leave a working family relationship because they feel a bit restless? Is this movie a worship of selfishness?Or is it a reminder that life is short and you have to get to what really matters, and be with people who are truly wonderful and good, no matter what?I can't think of a more joyous way to ask the question.

Absolutely charming! Wonderful coming of age story, though the protagonist is middle-aged. Europeans have much more appreciation for mature women in both cinema and real life than we Americans. The film is light-hearted and sensitive. The acting, even in minor roles, is superb!In a very Italian setting, principally Venice, a tale is told to which anyone can relate. The characters are ordinary and extraordinary. Each person has quirks or eccentricities and each of the two main characters in Venice has their own personal angst. It is about grabbing one's chances for happiness in this life. Carpe diem. It is also about discovering one's own value and values.

This is a wry, witty Italian comedy with a underlying radical message I don't think the Vatican would approve. Licia Malietta stars as Rosalba Barletta a woman not enamored with either her macho, inconsiderate husband Mimmo Barletta (Antonio Catania) or her life as a housewife. On a vacation she is accidentally left behind in Venice, and then on a whim decides to stay for awhile. She needs to breathe free from the domination of her husband who sees her only as an asset and doesn't love her. Indeed he has a mistress.What she finds in Venice are new warm friends and a certain man, Fernando Girasoli (played with sly finesse by veteran Swiss-born actor Bruno Ganz), who speaks in poetic phrases but wants to hang himself. She also rediscovers a delight in life and the freedom to be herself and do what she wants to do, which includes playing the accordion and reading Mark Twain in bed. She finds a job in a flower shop, a small room, makes friends with the masseuse next door and feels alive for the first time in ages.Her husband sends a plumber he is about to hire to play detective, find her and bring her back, resulting in some light comedic episodes enriched by off-beat characters.Malietta is very winning in the part and certainly will serve as a heroine for frustrated housewives everywhere. Her desire is not for a fling or for physical thrills, rather her desire is to find herself as herself apart from her identification as wife and mother.I have hinted above at her eventual choice, but you will have to see this warm-hearted romantic comedy for yourself to find out what she chooses and why.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Licia Maglietta plays the Italian every-woman in this 2000 comedy. She is literally left behind at a bus station by her family while she tries to fish out her wedding ring at the bottom of a toilet, which is essentially her marriage to an over excitable toilet-fixture businessman with a buxom mistress. So, what does our left behind spouse do; she hitchhikes to Venice and arranges to miss her bus home repeatedly as she finds work and a new life in a beautiful canaled city. Enter Bruno Ganz, a suicidal waiter that falls for her immediately. She plays the accordion; he sings. You get the idea, quirky.The film develops very slowly and the laughs are here and there. Licia is nice and we want her to find happiness, but I must say there is a TV sitcom feel to the film, which probably didn't bother the Europeans, but here in America, awash with nightly sitcoms, I felt a little drowsy through Bread and Tulips.